At 04:54 PM 12/24/96 -0500, John McEwen wrote:
>In any event, I hope that each of you might consider sharing your LBC
>experiences with all of us over the next few days of holidays - if you have
>time to sit down at the keyboard - or if you reach over a turkey-bloated
>abdomen.
>
Happy Boxing Day!
My visiting parents are off visiting more family, my daughters are scouring
the mall, and my wife is out too. Now's the time I can put on my christmas
CD's, crank it up and check on my e-mail. Life is good! Been nibbling at a
turkey carcass and assorted finger foods all day, couple o' cold ones under
my belt and great tunes. Life is better than good... life is great!
My LBC history, hmmmmm. I don't really remember where it all started.
They've just sort of always been there. Back in the very early sixties,
maybe late fifties, my dad taught my mom to drive. I vaguely remember
offering advice from the back seat. That first LBC was an early fifties
Zephyr or Consul. The other family car was always some HUGE piece of near
new American iron. Eventually Mom got the land yachts as ferry and general
purpose transport and dad ran through a constant and seemingly never ending
string of LBC's as his commuters. I distinctly remember A40's, a Morris
Traveller, Zephyrs and Consuls and an Austin 1100 and a Cambridge. I think
the Traveller was my favourite.
I remember the day the bug bit me. I was about eight, sitting in the back
seat of the family barge with my younger brother on the way to some family
gathering in the heart of the city. We were cruising west on the Trans
Canada highway and I was looking out the window watching traffic go by in
the opposite direction, across the median. In the midst of the behemoths
hurtling by there was this incredible spindly looking car, green, great big
wire wheels, windsheild laid flat, sweeping fenders and the driver in a
leather flying helmet, goggles, and a great big grin. That was it. I was
hooked for life. It was a TC and since that day I wanted one more than
anything else. An E-type comes a close second.
I learned to drive in the fields behind my dad's place in a `53 A30 with
(can you believe it?) no brakes! That dear old car taught almost an entire
generation of neighbourhood kids to drive. It was coaxed back to life and
then customized every spring and ended it's poor, tortured existence with no
roof, no bonnet, no doors and no seats. I started my own LBC career with a
`64 Triumph Herald, a cool car with very unusual (for the time)
instrumentaion. It was combination Metric/Imperial, had a very ratty
leather interior, lot's of wood and a reserve fuel tank (sort of). Very
high cool quotient with the high school set. I next graduated to a `66
Sprite with a transplanted 1275. It had a nasty habit of twisting off axles
and burning up clutches. It was the car, not the driver... you believe me
don't you? Next was a `67 MGB, bigger and arguably better but even rattier.
This was followed shortly by a brand new arctic white `76 B with everything
I could get, O/D, chrome wires, fancy-shmantzy stereo etc. Almost
immediately people started driving in to this car. It didn't seem to matter
whether it was parked, stopped at a light or moving at speed. People just
loved to drive into it. By the time it was two years old every single
corner had been pranged and I still had a perfect driving record. It's
true, I swear.
As my resources increased so did my MG's. I added a `64 roadster "project
car" stored at my parents and a dark blue `67 GT with O/D and wires.... oh,
and eventually a wife. (Her LBC history is a story in itself). We lived in
a condo with a two MG garage. His `n hers, new `n old, hard `n soft top,
light `n dark, bent `n straight. The family started to change: add one
daughter, subtract one project car. I was in school and times were tight.
When a kid in his dad's Mach 1 lost it in a corner and used our GT as a
backstop we lost another MG. It took us a while but we eventually replaced
the GT with a `66, again with wires and O/D.
The GT was a daily driver for us for years till I finally managed to fulfill
my lifes ambition and got my hands on a TC. The GT became a project and
remains so to this day. It WILL see the light of day, I swear. For my
birthday two years ago my wife gave me a steering wheel for the GT as a sort
of "vote of confidence". It will be the very last thing I cermoniously add
to the finished car. She broke the other one hauling herself out of the car
when she was expecting our second daughter.
That's my LBC history, for what it's worth. I thank all the BritCar gods
that I married a woman who loves them as much as I do. She's the only SO in
our T series club that insists on equal time behind the wheel, God bless
`er. May you all be so lucky!
Happy new year to all!
___ \______ Ross MacPherson
/ __ \ __ / /------|) arm@unix.infoserve.net
/ (___)---------/ (___) Vancouver, BC, Canada
1947 MG-TC 3528 1966 MGB-GT
|